Union blasts final TSA rule on port ID cards
Workers may be required to purchase cards before equipment is ready to read them.
The Transportation Security Administration's publication of a final rule requiring port workers to purchase identification cards is rankling union officials.
Labor representatives were particularly upset because the Transportation Worker Identification Card rule, published Wednesday, does not require port operators to install the machines that would read the cards to verify employees' identities.
"We do anticipate a second [TWIC] rule" for card readers to be published this year, said Amy Kudwa, a TSA spokeswoman.
Meanwhile, port workers, truckers and maritime industry employees will have to buy ID cards that for months will go virtually unchecked, said Leigh Strope, spokeswoman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Enrollments will begin at some ports in March, and the cards will be phased in gradually at others. Ultimately the rule will require more than 750,000 port workers who have access to secure areas to pay up to $159 each for cards that will be valid for five years.
But without the machines that can scan the cards to verify the users' identities, the new IDs will be "no better than the cheap ID cards" currently in use, Strope said.
She said the rule also fails to take the high turnover rate in the trucking industry into account. She argued that the cards are too costly for workers who cannot typically use them for as long as TSA anticipates. Truckers "are already scraping by on the bottom of the barrel just to maintain their trucks," she said.
International Biometric Industry Association Chairman and Director Walter Hamilton, in contrast, argued the rule was "much improved" in its final version, though he said there is "always room for nitpicking."
Card applicants will undergo a criminal history and immigration status check and must submit biometric identifiers -- including all 10 fingerprints -- to government databases, TSA said Wednesday in a statement that accompanied the rule.
Hamilton said fewer workers will be deemed ineligible for TWIC cards because the parameters of required criminal history checks were changed to reflect a greater emphasis on banning people who might have some proximity to the "nexus of terrorism," as opposed to those who have petty crimes on their record.
Having port workers get the biometric cards before readers are put in place is "necessary and prudent," Hamilton argued. TWIC cards can still be checked by Coast Guard inspectors, he said. He acknowledged that security will improve once the card readers are required.